A FORMER bacon factory was gutted by fire over the weekend - for the second time in less than a year.Arsonists hit the former Direct Table Bacon Smoking plant on Lamdin Road in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday night and again on Sunday morning, eventually leaving it a burnt-out shell.

A FORMER bacon factory was gutted by fire over the weekend - for the second time in less than a year.

Arsonists hit the former Direct Table Bacon Smoking plant on Lamdin Road in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday night and again on Sunday morning, eventually leaving it a burnt-out shell.

Flames leapt ten foot into the air over the neighbouring light industrial units and thick black smoke poured onto houses in the nearby Mildenhall Estate.

Fire crews used a turn table ladder to douse the flames as the highly flammable material in the abandoned factory went up.

In the remains of the offices it was clear that people had been using the factory as a social gathering place, and they will now be the focus of fire and police officers investigations.

Assistant Divisional Officer Pat Dacey, said: “We are most likely to be dealing with a deliberate fire.

“When we arrived some of building had already been destroyed by a fire earlier in the night and there was a lot of thick smoke caused by the burning sandwich panels.

“These are dangerous because they are highly flammable and with the light steel frame the building was likely to collapse quite quickly.

“Therefore it was too dangerous to send any men inside so we used water from the River Lark and local hydrants to douse the flames using two hose reels outside and the turn table ladder from above.”

The first attack occurred shortly after 10pm and took 25 minutes to put out using one hose reel and two breathing apparatus.

The second fire yesterday morning was more extensive and took eight appliances from across west Suffolk two hours to extinguish.

Onlooker Gary Lisseman said: “I looked out of the window and saw dark clouds and I thought there was a storm coming before I realised it was smoke - very thick black smoke.

“It is a relief no one was injured and no jobs were put at risk again.”

The thousand square metre bacon plant was abandoned in November last year after it was devastated by a massive blaze caused by a meat smoking machine.

Staff arriving for an early morning shift at the factory, which produced the Suffolk Crown brand and products for leading supermarkets including Tesco and Morrisons, watched in horror as the fire ripped through the building.

They were then forced to make a daily 150 mile round trip to the firm's second site in Hertfordshire.

The Danish owned firm have since reopened in a state of the art multi-million pound plant on the outskirts of Bury at Saxham.